Samantha Fox

Apr 15, 1966 (59 years old) in Mile End, London, England

Samantha Karen Fox (born 15 April 1966) is an English pop singer and former glamour model from Wood Green in North London. She has appeared on reality television shows and has occasionally worked as a television presenter and actress.

Fox began her glamour modelling career at age 16. After she placed second in a Sunday People amateur modelling contest, The Sun recruited her to pose for Page 3, where she made her first appearance in February 1983. Named The Sun's "Page 3 Girl of the Year" for 1984, 1985 and 1986, she became one of the most photographed British women of the 1980s and a notable sex symbol of the era. She left Page 3 in 1986, aged 20, to focus on pop music, but made occasional glamour modelling appearances thereafter, notably featuring in a 1996 Playboy pictorial. In 2008, she was voted the top Page 3 model of all time.

Released in March 1986, Fox's debut single for the Jive Records label, "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)", became a top-10 hit across Europe, North America and Australia, reaching number one in several countries. Her first three studio albums—Touch Me (1986), Samantha Fox (1987) and I Wanna Have Some Fun (1988)—all produced international hit singles and she was nominated in the British Female Solo Artist category at the Brit Awards 1988. Her subsequent albums—Just One Night (1991), 21st Century Fox (1997) and Angel with an Attitude (2005)—were less successful, but she has continued to tour and has announced a forthcoming seventh studio album, produced by Ian Masterson.

In her early career, Fox dated men including Peter Foster, the Australian fraudster, and Paul Stanley, the rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of rock band Kiss. Following persistent rumours in the 1990s about her sexual orientation, she came out as a lesbian in 2003. She was in a long-term relationship with her former manager Myra Stratton from 2003 until Stratton died from cancer in 2015. In 2022, she married her tour manager, Linda Birgitte Olsen.

Fox was born on 15 April 1966, the eldest child of John Patrick Fox, a builder, and Carole Ann Wilken, an actress and former dancer on the 1960s pop music programme Ready, Steady, Go! She grew up in Crouch End in North London, later describing her background as "a working-class market-trader family".

Fox took an interest in the theatre from an early age, attending the Anna Scher Theatre School from age five, and subsequently attending Mountview Theatre School. She also attended St Thomas More Catholic School, Wood Green. She formed her first pop band when she was 14 and signed her first record deal with Lamborghini Records at age 15.

Fox's glamour modelling career began at age 16 when her mother took photographs of her wearing lingerie and submitted them to The Sunday People's "Face and Shape of '83" amateur modelling contest. After Fox placed second, a photographer for The Sun invited her to pose topless for Page 3; at the time, she was the youngest person to model topless for the feature. British publications could then legally feature topless models aged 16 and older, although the minimum age was raised to 18 in May 2004. ...

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